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I have been asked several times, “CatLady, is it a good idea to post a shirtless photo of myself on my online dating profile?”

Let me spell it out for you: NO!

Men of the internet, you will never win by posting a shirtless photo of yourself.. ESPECIALLY if it was taken in the bathroom.

Let’s dig deeper..

If you are a male, it is safe to say you are either toned/ripped, or you are not.

If you work out and have something to show, once again – especially if it is a bathroom self portrait – you appear absolutely full of yourself. I can imagine the pep talk you give yourself in the mirror every morning. You are probably super high maintenance, and I already don’t think I can deal with you.

Let’s say you are probably average, aren’t sporting a tan and keep your six pack in the cooler.. You, my friend, are going to be mocked.

“But what if I am on the beach?” I still think posting any sort of shirtless photo of yourself seems tool-ish, but it’s not as bad as the shirtless bathroom photo. I will probably mock you if you are pasty on the beach, or sporting a farmer tan. (Believe me, I’ve seen it!)

Let me counter it with this – you probably don’t want to see every female on OKCupid in a bikini, right? Fact of life: Some female body types just look better in a tasteful one-piece suit.

Save your manly chest for a private viewing.. She’ll let you know if she’s dying to see it.

Thank you! I’m so glad someone said that . . .I never understand why so many men think we women want to see half naked pictures of them right on their profiles. I always assume they THINK that’s what they’d like to see on ours ??? And on the subject of self portrait bathroom photos . . . can we do something to ban the “hold your phone up to the bathroom mirror” pics? There really are better ways to take a self portrait, boys.

I only partly agree with you here. The bathroom selfies are awkward and smug, all at once. Men should definitely not post those. But shirtless beach pictures? When you’re tan and ripped? As long as it isn’t one of the primary three on the profile, they’re totally fine. And intriguing. And not arrogant. As much as women all say we don’t like the shirtless pics, OKtrends suggest otherwise.

However frequent and emphatic the denial that shirtless pics are appreciated, I suspect there exists a non-negligible number by whom they are. I say this having seen commercials, over recent years, for every Ryan Gosling movie.

The divergence of usage and expectation suggests to me a market gap. Opportunity: develop a swimsuits-only dating site. I assume it is not only men who are disappointed by the strong prevalence of intentional deception when it comes to body pictures. But if it IS only men, well, there’s one explanation for this phenomenon: unexpected exemplification of the Golden Rule.

I must disagree with Tim, who said the shirtless pic is the guy equivalent of the “high angle eyes shot”. In my opinion an abs picture is more akin to a cleavage shot. This angled shot IS far too common, though. No, that is not what shorter women look like to us. Ever. These pictures, insofar as they are useful to anyone at all, are often misleading. Don’t use them. Any guy who’s savvy already hates them, and will be leery.

Aw, geeze, maybe I should just start a sister site to this one. 😦 Soonie, what’s the male equivalent of a cat lady? Grumpy old man? Dirty old man? Charity prospect (Arsenic & Old Lace)? Just pathetic (after a Dorothy Dix column)? Viagrampa?

This has been debunked… and startlingly so. http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-4-big-myths-of-profile-pictures/. I don’t know the parameter they used for this particular study, but it found that the same individual got 30% for traffic hits with a shirtless pic, than fully clothed, and even less in dress clothes. Now this tendency goes down with age, but it illustrates what I feared, we’re all hopelessly shallow even if we don’t admit it. From my very limited experience thus far, I have tried to use a simple avatar for a such a profile, and despite whatever brilliant profundities I espoused, I got a fairly limited amount of visits, and zero responses to carefully articulated and thoughtful messages (and yes, devoid of requests to meet in the closest abandoned warehouse). When I used just a picture of me holding a laptop so at waist-level and angled upwards, I received 5 visits, from non-automated members in the first 10 minutes. Now, I’m not saying that this applies to every individual, but it is certainly a worthy counter argument.